With major social drivers like globalization and climate change, the scope of environmental concerns has amplified, and these new issues are starting to affect consumers’ purchasing decisions. Consumers are taking notice of these environmental concerns and making more purchases of eco-friendly products from green companies. How can you take part in this save the world effort and make your products and company more eco-friendly?

Let’s start with your company. It’s here where the small things matter. Turn computers and lights off when not in use. Use biodegradable or recyclable cups or even thermoses for drinks. Recycle all paper products including envelopes, check stubs, excess copies ran, and print outs that didn’t turn out right. Don’t even bother with phonebooks. Use an online site to look up phone numbers and address. With all of the online social networking going on nowadays, your good efforts will not go unnoticed. 

Going green may take a little more time and effort but it in the long run, it could affect your bottom line. Consumers are doing more research about companies before making purchases. They’re not only checking out the Better Business Bureau and Standard and Poor’s but also Fortune’s Top 10 Green Companies and Newsweek’s Top 500 Green US Companies. They are starting to make a conscious effort to make their purchases from companies that show they care about our environment. 

Now, let’s talk about your products and services. Since these are the end products your customers see and judge your company by, green efforts should be made to make these environmentally safe. For example, use recyclable packaging whenever possible. Though pricier, use organic or all natural products and materials if you can. Use green suppliers and shippers. Make receipts and other documents consumers will see using recycled paper. Make sure you advertise your efforts right on your products.

A big influence on our environment is the technology used today, including your website. There are ways that can make your website more green and appealing to environmentally conscious consumers. The biggest step you can take to make your website green is getting environmentally friendly web hosting. Web hosting servers consume vast amounts of energy to keep them running 24/7. Green web hosting typically involves servers directly powered by renewable energy, energy use offset using a carbon credit, and hosting servers optimized for energy efficiency. 

Another step is getting your site certified by CO2Stats.com. CO2Stats boasts they can improve your visitor engagement, page load times, energy efficiency as well as neutralizing your site’s carbon footprint and getting link traffic from other green sites.

You can also simplify your design. Each server request takes energy on both ends. The larger the transfer, the more energy consumed. You can also decrease your web site’s energy usage by posting fewer images with lower resolution, using fewer JavaScript widgets, and using less resource-intensive technology like Flash. This will decrease load time and server requests.  

Be mindful of your colors, speed up your site, and use printer friendly versions of content. Computer monitors use energy to display colors. The older CRT monitors use more energy to display lighter colors but the newer LCD monitors use more energy to display dark colors. Because of the prevalent use of LCD monitors, the darker the color of your site, the more energy it will use. Pages that take longer to load use more energy, so try to speed up your site’s load time. Using printer friendly versions of content usually means certain graphics are removed and content is converted to text-only. Colors are removed (to use less ink), text is converted to serif fonts, links are underlined, font size is shrunk and navigation items are removed.

No one change is going to change the world, but small changes and conscious efforts will make a difference. As people become more aware of our environment and ways to save it, they will be looking to you as a company and business to lead in these efforts. Be sure you are ready for that responsibility.